SV Tengah

30/12/2024

52 - 2024

This week, we leave Tengah behind and fly to Vietnam (Da Nang), where all Scott's siblings have decided will be this year's eating destination.

MONDAY: We enjoy our last meal onboard Tengah with Kawabata before heading to Vietnam. Kawabata is an amazing cook, and we suspect this might be our final real Japanese meal for a long time—so we savor every bite 😋.

TUESDAY: It’s Christmas Eve🎄! We are flying to Da Nang, and spend most of the day at the airport. Lunch is Jollibee (the Philippine version of KFC), and let’s just say it confirms what we feared would happen—we miss Japanese food already!

WEDNESDAY: We take a walk along the beach in Da Nang, which Forbes Magazine named one of the world’s most beautiful beaches. Unfortunately, it’s rainy season and chilly! We quickly retreat to the nearest bar and don’t leave until we’re sufficiently warmed up 😲🍻

THURSDAY: A little hungover, we take a taxi to try Bún bò huế—a rich, spicy beef soup with layers of flavor—at a local spot that came highly recommended. It’s decent, but we’ve had better. The rest of the afternoon is spent shopping (mostly Mie).

FRIDAY: We pick up Scott’s family at the airport. Mie hasn’t seen them since June 2023, but thankfully, they all say she hasn’t aged a day 😇.

SATURDAY: We hit every market in Da Nang, searching for our favorite coffee in the world and fabric for new bedsheets. We think we’ve scored some good deals, but—true to Vietnamese style—we quickly realize we’ve been “Vietscammed.”

SUNDAY: We head out to see the famous Da Nang Dragon Bridge fire show. For reasons we still don’t fully understand 🤷🏽‍♂️, the dragon breathes fire nine times and sprays water three times during the performance. It’s bizarre but mesmerizing!

22/12/2024

51 - 2024

Scott and I love flipping through our old to remind us of our past adventures, so in an effort to keep this ‘publication’ alive, we’re diving right back in. This will also reveal that our Japan posts are a bit behind schedule, but we'll do both TengahWeekly, which is more current and more "in depth" posts about Japan. This week, we arrived in the Philippines after four days of sailing from Okinawa, Japan.

MONDAY
We anchor Tengah 5 minutes after sunset at Puro Bay (Northern Luzon) after four long days at sea with 25-45 knots wind most of the way. We crack open a celebratory beer and proudly display Tengah’s only Christmas decoration—a star made from palm fronds and seashells, gifted to us by the lovely people of Kapingamarangi, Micronesia.

TUESDAY
This is (sometimes) what making landfall in a new country looks like—an empty beach in the middle of nowhere. After a bit of searching, we manage to find a tricycle to take us 15km to the Immigration Office in Vigan City. It turns out the immigration office isn’t equipped to handle foreign passports—they don’t even have a machine to scan them! A scanner has to be delivered from an office two hours away. We’ll spare you the details, but the whole process took 12 hours…

WEDNESDAY
We’re already back on the move. We need to get to Manila for an appointment to have our anchor chain re-galvanized—something Scott has spent eight months arranging. No way we’re missing it! Fortunately, it’s a beautiful sail. We even get to fly our new asymmetrical spinnaker and mizzen spinnaker. Two spinnakers at once!

THURSDAY
As we approach Manila Bay, I don’t think we’ve seen this many boats since crossing the Panama Canal almost five years ago. Our crew member, Kawabata from Japan, helps Scott keep an eye out for the fast oil tankers, which clearly don’t care that we’re under sail.

FRIDAY
It’s cleaning day. We scrub down the boat while Mie jumps into client meetings to catch up on work after a week at sea. Oh, and did I mention the toilet is clogged? So we spend a good chunk of the day unsuccessfully trying to clear p**p from the pipes—just another glamorous day aboard Tengah!

SATURDAY
We treat ourselves to lunch at the Caylabne Bay Resort & Marina, where Tengah is moored. We tried to warn Kawabata that food in the Philippines might not quite measure up to Japan’s culinary standards, but I’m not sure he was fully prepared for what they served us… Luckily, $2 beers make everything a little more palatable.

SUNDAY
Still on the hunt for better food, we take a taxi to the nearest village—and it proves to be a very wise decision. We also manage to squeeze in some last-minute Christmas shopping at the local market. Kawabata doesn’t think the produce looks fresh, but after 4 years in the remote South Pacific, we might have lowered our standards more than we realized…

07/09/2024

Hi everyone, we have decided to stop updating this page. It doesn't mean we will stop posting, it just means we will only be posting to our personal pages and also our instagram page at:

https://www.instagram.com/svtengah/

If you're interested in following our experiences, hope you'll join us there. Thanks for supporting us here, but as we aren't trying to be influencers, we have to prioritize our time and focus on getting more experiences to tell you about vs. curating a lot of different platforms.

Hope that means you'll hear from us more often :)

2,009 Followers, 821 Following, 345 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Sailing Tengah ()

23/08/2024

We are both gaining weight for a simple reason: Japanese food. Everything we eat, whether we know what we've ordered or not, has been incredible and we can't stop.

From the old couple's 6 seat diner in Hirado to the yakiniku grill right across from the Hakata fishing port to the sushi counter on a Nagasaki side street, you just need to see the focus on the face of the chef to understand the importance of food here.

I'm not alone in thinking this.

UNESCO has recognized the cuisine as an Intangible World Heritage. Tokyo has the most Michelin stars of any city in the world, far more than Paris or London. Of the top 5 cities, 3 are in Japan.

But you don't need to go to fancy restaurants - in fact, I would argue cheaper ones that few foreigners visit are better because focus is on the food, not the décor or bragging rights. Mie's favorite was a ramen shop in a fishing town and mine was a restaurant in Ehime prefecture where we understood 0% of the menu and the sushi was literally served on the countertop.

On the flip side, one of our Japanese friends eats as if it’s a religious experience: his eyes close and the first bite is slow and thorough to appreciate the gift given to him. When you get your food, you don't say "Thank you" to the chef, you say "itadakimasu", which loosely translates to "I humbly receive ".

But things aren't always easy here. Most menus are handwritten and can include flowery language, frustrating google translate and if there's an English menu, I reflexively flinch because I fear they have watered down the food for foreigners. At home, that's called "fusion". A good rule of thumb is that if the clientele is mostly foreigners, the food will not be as tasty.

However, some simply reject non-Japanese customers so Mie has to stand outside and I walk in, show two fingers and once they point to a table, shock them with "sumimasen, only English" and Mie coming in moments later.

I just hope our visas run out before we gain too much weight!

04/07/2024

Nothing prepares you for Nagasaki ground zero. During our trip, we have experienced many wonderful positive things but the most powerful are sometimes quite somber.

In the Memorial Hall, 70 thousand lights illuminate the towers. One for each death.

At the hypocenter (ground zero), schoolchildren walk past the column marking where the 21 kiloton equivalent plutonium bomb, Fat Man, detonated 500meters above.

The clock was destroyed at 11:02 am on August 9, 1945, stuck forever to mark the moment when tens of thousands of people were instantly killed, mostly women and children.

The peace statue, built in 1955, has one hand pointed towards peace and the other pointed to the sky to remind us of the dangers of nuclear weapons.

It's pretty frightening to think that today's intercontinental ballistic missiles can be 600 times more powerful than Fat Man. The most powerful bomb ever tested is over 3000x. I do wonder if those with the nuclear football or equivalent understand this.

Taniguchi Sumiteru, a hibakusha, or atomic bomb survivor, said it best:

“People appear to be gradually forgetting the suffering of the past. This forgetfulness
terrifies me. I fear that forgetfulness will lead to the acceptance of further atomic bombings."

Everyone, especially the leaders of nuclear powers, should visit Nagasaki at least once.

24/06/2024

Tengah was denied entry into Nagasaki city!

We left Kushikino for a sporty 75 nm day sail to Nagasaki, a city famous for a terrible reason: the last city (hopefully ever) that suffered an atomic bombing.

Sailing in Japan is far more difficult than the tropics. Strong current combined with unpredictable winds make for challenging conditions, especially once you add in all the fishing boats and nets! But we'd much rather deal with some upwind sailing vs. have to use the motor. But on this sail, the forecast was wrong and we started out with up to 35 knots and rain, going upwind! Tengah seems to really enjoy those conditions, us, not so much.

One of the nicest spots in all of Japan is Dejima Wharf, the only place foreigners were allowed for 200+ years during the isolationist 17-19th century of the last sh**un era. We wanted a spot and despite negotiating, pleading and finally begging, we got a hard no. The fact we got such an emphatic rejection in Japan outlines how persistent I was. :)

In this country, once you are over 50 feet overall length, your moorage options decrease dramatically. The registration docs show Tengah at 56 feet, so it's hard to sneak in. Another big boat ignored the rules and tried to tie up a few years ago and the coast guard, immigration, customs and the police were called.

I decided against that level of excitement.

We're now moored with the big ships on a resort island called Iojima, next to a barge. Luckily, the fast ferry is a 3 minute walk from Tengah and takes 20 minutes to get to Nagasaki.

Aside from reminding us of the horrors that come with nuclear war, the city has a rich history and after utter devastation, has redeveloped into a beautiful place that few foreign visitors experience.

15/06/2024

We ate raw chicken sashimi in Kagoshima-shi!

With a safe berth at Kushukino and forecasted calm weather, we took the train over to Kagoshima-shi, the prefecture capital, for a weekend of playing "normal tourist".

Located in the shadow of the Sakurajima active volcano, the city gets so much volcanic debris that school children sometimes wear helmets due to the risk! After getting blanketed by volcanic ash in Vanuatu, Tengah was probably happy we didn't bring her along. We just hope she doesn't get jealous that we're sleeping in a hotel.

We travel to experience local life, not just see sights. Eating local specialties is part of that!

A specialty in southern Kyushu, eating raw chicken breast, thigh and liver requires you to ignore an entire lifetime's worth of food safety warnings. And perhaps have a few extra shochu shots for liquid courage and possibly as a disinfectant.

Mie wasn't convinced but after the first bite, went back for more.

This izakaya has a small English menu with some of the more "foreigner friendly" dishes but I quickly noticed the Japanese menu was far more extensive. Adventurous eating sometimes involves ignoring the printed menu and pointing at what other people are eating.

Eventually realizing we weren't easily frightened, the owner gave us something that wasn't on either menu.

Raw karuma ebi (sweet shrimp) was in season and while the sashimi was amazing, the owner followed it up the heads as a dessert.

Kampai!

13/06/2024

Practicing the fine Japanese art of slurping soup!

Apparently slurping is polite, shows the chef your appreciation and allows you to enjoy the hot ramen without delay. It's not as easy as it seems and one of my first attempts resulted in me aspirating the noodles and almost choking to death!

Mie, unable to let go of decades of cultural prohibitions against slurping, ate quietly and likely offended the chef in the process. :)

11/06/2024

We've arrived on the Japanese mainland, but not where we planned. The forced change of destination helped us understand why so few boats have come to Japan.

Since 1633, foreign boats were heavily restricted due to rules dating back to the sh**un era. Even in 2018, only 5% of Japanese ports were open to foreigners and 95% were considered "closed ports" where you needed advanced permission to enter. That made cruising hard.

That all changed recently, but 400 years of being mostly closed to foreign boats means little cruiser infrastructure. But we see that as a good thing as we like discovering hidden gems and enjoy the challenge.

We hoped to get one of the two guest berths at Kushikino. Three days prior to arrival, we had to call and inform the harbormaster of our plans. Of course, he only speaks Japanese, but he stated that it'd probably be ok but due to our length, we would need both spots.

One day prior to arrival and as a developing tropical depression was pounding us with wind and rain, we had to confirm our arrival time and murphy struck. A visitor was still there so storm or not, Tengah could not fit.

I feared this, so I had made alternate plans.

So we are now at the Makurazaki fishing port on the southern end of Kagoshima prefecture. Despite arriving on a Sunday, we had a welcoming committee greet us, complete with gifts. Someone else gave us champagne and today, a local drove up to Tengah and asked if he could take our trash for us. Only in Japan.

Makurazaki specializes in skipjack tuna and particularly the katsuobushi dried skipjack flakes that form the umami base of most Japanese soups. We checked out the factories where they make 50,000 tons of the stuff each year. The process involves boiling, smoking for a month, resting, drying for up to 2 years and finally shaving the final product into flakes. Locals take what most consider a low end fish and make it into something super tasty!

Cruising, especially in Japan, teaches you to embrace uncertainty and view unexpected stops not as nuisances but rather, opportunities for discovery.

03/06/2024

We've already had a few "Only in Japan" experiences in our first week here. The first one involved certain foods which our mainland Japanese friends said they'd have trouble eating. But when in Rome…

Okinawa is considered a "Blue Zone", a region of the world where people live much longer than average. The locals have less cancer, heart disease and dementia on average and women here live longer than anywhere else on earth. Okinawans have a 40% higher chance of reaching 100 compared to the rest of Japan, a people known for their longevity. Food is an essential part of that, so I figured we'd just eat what the locals eat.

One of our first meals involved grilled beef. While that tasted amazing on its own, the chefs aren’t satisfied with that level of umami, so it’s dipped in raw egg. Apparently, salmonella is not a thing here.

But that was just an intro.

A few days later, Mie found a restaurant that looked more authentic than the rest. When we saw they made little effort to entice tourists or foreigners, I agreed that it's probably just for locals.

And it was.

The restaurant specializes in "Pork internal organs". I could see the mini-panic in Mie's eyes and she suggested the yakitori (grilled skewers) but I figure that if you're going do something, you might as well go all in.

We ordered the "Meat Sashimi: Internal Organs of the Pork Assortment". I had to order a sake and Mie ordered a beer and drank it quickly in hopes of getting liquid courage. The food came and while I kept meditating on the manta "trichinosis is rare in pigs nowadays", Mie went from "I am not sure I can swallow this" and "The brain is actually my favorite!"

In any event, we've been pinned down with Cat2 Typhoon Ewiniar and a few low pressures dumping rain on us. The weather should clear in the next few days and we'll make a run north to Kyushu, the southernmost mainland island.

28/05/2024

A missile was launched in our direction from North Korea last night. Never a dull moment on a circumnavigation!

Around 10:30pm the loudspeakers in town started making a frantic announcement, in Japanese, of course. I immediately checked the tsunami warning pages and found nothing. A typhoon is headed towards Okinawa, but probably won't hit us directly, so I couldn't imagine the panic was related to a typhoon that won't arrive for 48 hours.

I asked a Japanese friend what the message was about and he responded tersely: "North Korea just launched Missile, stay inside your house, or shelter".

I thought he was joking, but it seems he was not.

Thankfully, North Korea must not have stolen the complete set of plans as the missile exploded shortly after takeoff.

Today, we did a bit of typhoon prep but then headed out into the worsening weather because rain or shine (or missiles coming our way), we're here to eat.

The goal was to try another local specialty - Okinawa soba noodle soup. As expected, it was delicious!

28/05/2024

We have safely arrived in Japan and our first day here has made us realize three things: (1) it IS like another planet here (2) you need to be adventurous and be able to deal with uncertainty and (3) six months won't be enough!

Our first night out, we decided to dive into the food scene head first. We visited three different places for dinner, starting from the mainstream and progressing to the very local. We found the first restaurant ourselves, stumbled on the second on a dark side street and some Japanese girls told us about the third one.

All menus are only in Japanese and google translate doesn't always work with handwritten katakana/hiragana/kanji, the three alphabets here. Sometimes ordering involves closing your eyes, pointing and opening your mind as you eat what arrives at your table.

Those who are only willing to eat grilled chicken breast with salt and pepper will be missing out. Needless to say, everything, including the chicken tails, pork necks and pig ears tasted amazing.

With very few foreign pleasure yachts visiting, you are a rare breed. We take that up a notch. Locals think I'm Japanese, so they speak Japanese to me. I apologize with "sumimasen, only English." and after a bit of confusion, they assume we're just suitcase/hotel tourists and you sense a bit of disgust/dismissal in their eyes.

Then we say we arrived on a "yachto" and after shrieks of amazement, the Japanese hospitality cranks up 100 notches. Sailors who have visited have said the locals will shower you with drinks, gifts, bags of groceries and offers to cook you dinner. Perhaps they think we're homeless and need help? :)

It's only been a few days and I'm already sad that we only have 6 months to explore this place!